He's flawed, but he's right
New York Daily News
E. R. Shipp
Sunday, March 20th, 2005
Bill Cosby, America's favorite television dad, is the first to acknowledge that anyone who wants to call him a hypocrite is on sure footing. As he admitted in an interview with me last week, he's one of the ultimate do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do guys.
But whether he cheated on his wife or had inappropriate relations with other women, he's still carrying an important message.
"You can make fun of Bill Cosby and throw around the word 'hypocrisy' all day long. I will be that in your mind, but these numbers that are out there are growing," he told me. "'Bill Cosby is a hypocrite,' someone will say. Okay, but what does that have to do with these numbers?"
A few of the numbers he alluded to during our conversation are the statistics that show poverty among blacks is twice that among whites. And according to the National Urban League, blacks and Latinos are more likely to drop out of high school than their white counterparts. And of men in prison, some 2.2 million, representing about 700 per 100,000 of the populace, black men account for about 4,800 per 100,000. About 10% of all black males in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 29 are incarcerated. One can go on and on and on.
Cosby told me: "Bill Cosby has not said 'Follow me.' He's saying: 'Wake up. Here are some numbers you need to be serious about.'"
Our imperfect messengers are there to been seen, heard, sliced, diced and fried; but their primary role is to get the conversation going - and hoping that we'll listen. The numbers don't lie, as Cosby says.
Cosby's main message is that blacks have to make fewer excuses for not succeeding in America in the 21st century. He says he's not interested in regaining credibility. But, to be real, his problems may have gained him more credibility with some of the people he's tried, clumsily at times, to reach since, at a recent gathering, he shocked many people by railing that "the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal" by lousy parenting and little interest in education.
As he juggled business calls and one from Camille, his wife of 41 years, he offered this simple explanation of what he's saying: "We're talking about love, saving, stopping the bleeding."
I wonder how long we hang in there with people who don't live up to their message. When does the messenger taint the message so much that he needs to step aside? Or is it that we still need the drawing power of even a flawed messenger to get the message out?
Wouldn't it be lovely if people who can walk on water were spreading the word? Of course. It's past the time that all those more perfect intellectuals and moralists and fence-sitters and backbenchers get into the game and deal with those numbers. I would join Cosby in the applause.
"It's not about white people any more," he says of the major challenges facing blacks. Cosby says: "Get up, move. We've got to do something. Call me any kind of name you want to, but this must stop, and the best way to stop it is with our own resources."
Too many young people don't even listen to folks who don't have Cosby's baggage, which, by the way, is the baggage of a whole lot of public figures from the pulpit to politics. "Examine the message," Cosby says. "There are people without these problems who are saying the same thing. They are role models. And you're not paying attention to them."
Flawed as he may be, Cosby can gain the attention of America just by showing up and speaking out. He can be the difference between attracting 25 people to a gathering about kids or 1,000 - and that's what he's doing now that he's determined that it's okay to resurface.
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